2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
What will emerge, in terms of technological development in general, is the widespread application of the technologies we already possess. The key, therefore, will be which of these technologies we now choose to deploy in any given situation - and what priorities we give to each of them. We already have the technology available to make cars which will last for decades, but consumers have been persuaded to view them as fashion items - so they are treated as semi-disposable. We already have the technology to make better, more high-tech, houses; but, again, consumers (and especially the finance houses providing loans), don't want these - possibly with more justification, where many of the experimental ones demonstrated to date have had an unfortunate tendency to leak!
The key point here is that in general we already have the technology. What we need, in each case, is the will - the consumer demand - to do whatever we want. If we want multi-million-tonne floating cities capable to moving round the world, with tens of thousands of inhabitants, at speeds of 100 knots or more, this will cost a phenomenal amount of money - but, given that money, it is almost certainly achievable. If we want to irrigate the Sahara, to make it the new Garden of Eden, then this too would be possible - though it might be prohibitively expensive - if the money were made available. Indeed, fuelled by such injections of funds (in the form of substantial farm subsidies, especially in the form of cheap water),wheat output from the Saudi Arabian desert has increased a thousand-fold and the country is even now the world's fourth largest exporter of grain. And, of course, most of southern California - one of the most productive agricultural regions on Earth - would also be desert without (highly subsidised) irrigation water being brought from the Colorado River!
We already have the existing technology necessary to achieve almost anything we want to do - it remains for us to decide what we want to do.
This is one area where our groups were, perhaps, more astute than most futurologists. After some debate, they recognised the importance of the unlimited resources now becoming available to humanity. Most futurologists, however, seem to be so close to the details they are describing that they do not make these wider connections - even though the details overall add up to the same picture that our groups saw.
9 May 2003
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